


Another Mission, Another Mess

by icarus_chained



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, F/M, Future Fic, Guilt, Love, M/M, Missions, Missions Gone Wrong, Post-Zero Hour, Protectiveness, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-13 19:51:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10520676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: Kallus has been slowly intergrating into the crew when the Ghost is assigned to a normal supply run. The mission goes south, as it usually does, Zeb takes a hit, Kallus doesn't take it well, and the rest of the crew try to pick of the pieces. Another mission, another mess. Just another day on the Ghost.





	1. Chapter 1

It was supposed to be just a standard supply run. Just swing by a backwater port and pick up some basic food and medicines. Just a supply run. Why did those never go to plan?

"Spectre 2," Kanan's voice came over the comm, grunting with effort while the oh-so-familiar sounds of a firefight whirled around him. "We could use a pick-up. West quarter, near the livestock pens." There was a bellow of fury somewhere beside him. He cut off, presumably to do something about it, and Hera already had the Ghost off the ground and heading their way before his voice came back with a mildly plaintive: "If you could hurry, that'd be nice. We're a little swarmed down here."

"On my way," Hera sighed, sing song with familiarity. She could nearly sense his answering rueful grin. "Be there in two. Be alive when I get there, huh?"

Kanan huffed out a breath. "We'll do our best," he promised, and Hera frowned slightly. That hadn't sounded quite as teasing as usual. Ah, poodoo. Okay. Picking up the pace a bit, then. Pick-up yesterday, why was she not surprised?

The area around the pens was in uproar when the Ghost whined down over it. It looked less like a fight and more like an all-out riot, dust stirred up over the entire quarter and making it difficult to make things out. It took her a second to pick out her people in the middle of it, and that was almost entirely because the downdraft from the Ghost was clearing things out a little bit. That, and lightsabers were generally easy to spot. Well. Lightsaber, singular, in this case. It took her a second to figure out why.

Zeb was hit. Hit _bad_ , from the looks of things. Ezra and Sabine were holding him propped up between them, sticking to blasters while Kanan and his lightsaber fought a rearguard action around them. They were moving together in a slow, tight cluster. All of them, minus one. Spectre 7 was nowhere in evidence. The riot boiled around them. A lone fighter in the middle of that ...

"On your six, Spectre 1," she said, tight and controlled as she swung the Ghost to bring the bay doors to bear on them. "Do I need to make a second pick-up?"

" _No_ ," Kanan growled, still guarding the rear while the others clambered slowly and painfully aboard behind him. "I've got him. Give me a minute. Spectre 7! Spectre 7! _Kallus_! Get over here right now! We don't have time for this!"

For a long second, Hera heard nothing except for Kanan's laboured, angry breathing on the comms. No sign of a response, no indication that Kallus had even heard. She hadn't heard anything from him at all, she realised distantly. Ezra and Sabine checked in as they came aboard, on their own behalf and Zeb's, but nothing from Kallus. Which wasn't _like_ him. Kallus still had an imperial's lingering appreciation for protocol. He didn't normally go silent, and almost never in an open fight. Her hands tightened, wondering what in blazes he'd managed to get into, on a _supply run_ , when finally:

"Spectre 7. On my way." 

Clipped, terse, a rasping growl, but he answered. Hera breathed out silently. Oh good. So not _completely_ kriffed up then, blown mission or not. She shook her head, and focused back on the ship. As soon as Kanan gave the all clear, she got them up and out of atmosphere, and headed straight for hyperspace. She wasn't taking chances hanging around orbit with Zeb as injured as he was. She was going to point them somewhere nice and unoccupied until she figured out what the hell had happened down there.

As soon as they were safely underway, she handed the controls over to Rex and the droids, smiling tiredly at the old clone when he patted her on the arm, and made her way down to the hold to see what was what.

She passed Kallus on the way. He stalked past her with barely a glance, eyebrow bleeding, limping heavily on one leg. His hands were clenched into fists and his jaw was set so hard it was a wonder his teeth didn't crack. Hera paused, blinking at him, but he didn't say anything. He barely seemed to notice her, actually. He limped over to the room he and Zeb were now sharing and vanished inside it without so much as a word.

In his wake, Hera blinked a bit more, and then hurried down to see what kind of shape the _rest_ of them were in.

Zeb was on the floor, when she made the hold. Upright, though, and growling in frustration while Sabine and Ezra did their best to peel him out of his suit and get access to the wound. Some kind of contact burn, it looked like. Nasty one, curled up around his ribs. The kids looked to have it mostly in hand, though, or would do once Zeb stopped _fighting_ them as much. Hera left them alone for a minute. She looked, more or less instinctively, for the last member of her wayward family.

Kanan was still standing over by the bay doors. He looked rumpled, dusty, the way they all looked right now. He didn't seem to be injured, at least. Or angry, either, for all he'd snapped at Kallus a few minutes ago. He looked tired, rather, and thoughtful.

He had something in his hand, weighing it thoughtfully. Hera frowned as she approached. The thing looked like some sort of shock baton. Kanan turned it thoughtfully in his hands.

"... I take it things went sideways as usual?" she asked softly, coming up beside him. He lifted his head, flashed her a weary smile. 

"Do they ever not?" he answered wryly. Then sighed, and reached up to take off his mask and scrub his hand through his hair tiredly. "It wasn't the Empire, at least. Not directly, anyway. Though we might have preferred it if it was." His lip curled in disgust. "It turns out livestock isn't the only live cargo traded around here. Those two freighters on the north side of town? They were slavers. It turns out over the past year or so that little port has become quite the hub for them."

Hera sucked in a breath. She glanced down again at the thing in his hand. A shock baton, all right. It made a different, uglier sort of sense now.

"That wasn't in our information," she said, after a second to assimilate that. Coldly, with a hard sort of anger. "This was supposed to be a straight pick-up. Nobody mentioned slavers, and certainly not a year's worth of them."

Kanan sneered tiredly. "Yeah," he said, finally dropping the thing down by his side, resting it back against the wall behind him instead. "Yeah, we asked about that. Turns out our supplier got paid a bit more to sell our cargo to someone else. And us along with it. Apparently some of us are quite valuable these days, and not just to the Empire either."

"... They were looking for Zeb," Sabine said flatly behind her. Hera turned to them. Saw Zeb looking downwards, jaw as set as Kallus' had been earlier. Saw the other two kneeling stiff and angry beside him. Sabine looked up at her, cold fury in her eyes. "All of us, really, but Zeb most of all. Lasats are apparently a valuable commodity these days. Something about rarity value."

Hera ... Hera breathed through that. Slowly. _Carefully_. She breathed very, very carefully through the shock of it. Zeb snarled silently to himself. Thumped his fist, just once, against the floor underneath him. Yeah. Yeah, Hera could imagine.

She could imagine, too, how Kallus had reacted to that. His mood made a lot more sense, now. A different, so much uglier sort of sense again.

But then, guilt would do that to a person.

"... I take it," she said slowly. "I take it things didn't go well from that point, then?" Not that they could have. Not that anything could go right from that sort of a start.

"You could say that," Ezra sighed, sitting back tiredly off his haunches. "We were already surrounded by the time we figured it out. Me and Kanan and Zeb, anyway. Kallus and Sabine were still outside. They were only just back from scouting the junk market for parts. Turned out pretty lucky, that."

Kanan snorted softly. "That's one word for it," he said. Mildly. "Might have been luckier if Kallus had still been out of earshot when Zeb went down."

Zeb growled. Audibly, this time. Finally getting into the conversation. "Lucky shot," he spat, one hand hovering over his damaged ribs. "Should never have got through. They pack one hell of a lot of juice in those things."

In those ... the baton. Of course. Of course the baton. Hera clenched her hands tightly into fists.

"Yeah," Ezra agreed wryly. "Knocked you down like a pile of rocks." He looked over at Hera. "And then the idiot on top of him started gloating, talking about many credits he was going to get for him, and the next thing anyone knows, Kallus is dropping down off the ceiling and snapping people's _limbs_ off."

He looked honestly perturbed as he said it, a worried half-grimace on his face as he remembered, and Hera blinked, and glanced at Kanan. Who sensed it, and nodded.

"Kallus got a little bit ... upset," he confirmed quietly. "I'm not sure I've ever heard him fight like that before. Not even against us. Broke the man's arm, broke the man's neck, grabbed the baton and went to town. He wasn't sloppy, either. Murderous, but not sloppy. He did ... a lot of damage, very quickly. Didn't seem to care much about it either."

"Yeah, well," Sabine said, a little icily herself. "I'm not sure I did either. Only problem was he got a little deaf in the process. And there were a _lot_ of slavers down there. Not all working together, thankfully, but ... more than enough to make life difficult. Even _without_ ex-agents getting stab-happy and running off on their own."

Hera felt her eyebrows bounce up at that. "He ran off?" she asked, now genuinely worried and more than a little angry as well. But Zeb shook his head. Kanan too.

"Not ran off," Zeb clarified carefully. "Didn't leave us. Didn't leave _me_. Took the wide perimeter, though. Damn near got himself killed circling around on his own as well."

And there was temper in that. Growling, savage temper, a hint of something terrified. Something Hera recognised, very easily and very well. Something she felt every time she heard Kanan's voice go a little more serious on the comms.

They really did need to stop circling around each other, those two. They did need to actually admit, at some point, what was happening between them.

"That was mostly it, before you got to us," Kanan finished quietly. "He fell behind just as I was calling for you. I could feel him fighting, though. I knew he wasn't down. There was just ... a second there when I wasn't sure he was going to come."

"He was," Zeb growled stiffly. Holding out a hand towards Ezra, letting him and Sabine lever him carefully to his feet. "He was always coming, Kanan. Just needed a kick in the rear first, that's all. Trust me. He wasn't planning on staying behind."

"No," Kanan said shortly. "Just on killing everything in his way on the way out. Damn it, Zeb, he can't lose it like that. You saw him. He was more than half dead coming aboard, and he didn't care in the slightest! He keeps going like that, he's going to get himself killed!"

"Yeah, well, he won't!" Zeb snapped back. Panting, levering himself to his full height on a wincing Sabine's shoulder. "It was a once-off, Kanan! You know that. He got slapped in the face with it, that's all. He got slapped in the face, and he saw me go down, and he lost the plot a little bit. It happens. You know him, you know he hates being out of control. He's not going to let it happen again!"

"I'm not sure he's going to be able to _help_ it," Kanan growled. And then stopped. Then held up a hand, shook his head. "Look, Zeb. I know. I know what happened to him out there. I felt it. What happened on Lasan, what happened with you, I know what that means to him. But he's got to start getting a handle on it. You _both_ do. Or else his guilt and his-- Or else his guilt is going to get us all killed."

His love. His guilt and his _love_. They'd all of them heard it. With the possible exceptions of Zeb and Kallus themselves, none of the rest of them were blind to what was happening. Kanan sometimes wasn't very good at verbalising things like that, though. And Zeb, possibly, wasn't quite ready to hear it yet.

Certainly not now, anyway. Zeb drew himself up to his full height, one hand pressed to the bacta patches along his ribs, terrified fury rolling off him in waves. "Then I guess I'd better go talk to him, hadn't I," he growled, lips peeling back from his teeth as he looked at Kanan. Fairly uselessly, maybe. Kanan slumped tiredly beside her. He waved an agreeing hand, and let Zeb stiffly and furiously walk away.

The hold fell silent for a bit in his wake. Kanan slumped back against the wall, the shock baton sliding a little as he bumped against it. Ezra and Sabine hovered uncertainly in the middle of the room, glancing between Kanan, Hera, and the doorway Zeb had stalked through.

And Hera, for her part, felt like dropping her head into her hands and praying absently for the day to start over.

"Well," Kanan managed at last. "That went about as well as expected, didn't it?"

Hera sighed. A long, drawn out breath of aggravated despair. She leaned over to knock him gently on the shoulder, and then slumped in against the wall beside him. "They're not ready, you know," she chided gently. "Or, well. Zeb might be, but I really don't think Kallus is. I'm not sure pushing them is going to make it better."

"I had to do _something_ ," he sighed back, curling into her a bit. "You didn't feel him, Hera. Kallus, back there. A lot of it was guilt, an _awful_ lot of it, but that wasn't all there was. When Zeb went down ..."

"... I know," she said. She did, she really did. Zeb mattered to Kallus, on a level she wasn't sure the man himself understood. Zeb had done more than just 'accidentally recruit' him. Zeb had given him something, given him back a piece of himself. She could imagine what it would be like to see someone like that go down, and know that somewhere at the base of it you were partly responsible. Guilt. Guilt and love. Hell of a mix, that, and denying either of them wasn't going to make it any better. Kanan did have a point. Someone did need to do _something_.

She just thought that it might be better to have that someone be _them_. Zeb or Kallus. Most likely Zeb. She knew Zeb had been trying. Obliquely, as much as Zeb was ever capable of that. He'd been coaxing Kallus out. Needling him and challenging him, steering him gently when he stumbled. It had been working. She was pretty sure it had been working.

And now this. _Slavers_ , Lasan, every possible reminder of Kallus' past sins. That was sure to do _wonders_ for the ex-agent's willingness to ... to let Zeb in. To let himself be happy. To let himself move on from the bastard he'd once been.

"He didn't even look at Zeb," Kanan went on softly. Sliding down the wall beside her, the shock baton back in his hands. "When he made it in. He couldn't look at him. He was locked down as hard as anyone I've ever felt. He dropped this. Threw it, nearly. He stayed long enough to make sure Zeb was getting help, and then he left."

"He looked like death, too," Sabine commented quietly. The other two had drifted over, not quite close enough to be hovering but very nearly. "I think he did something to his leg again. Not that I'm surprised, given that he was running all over the place trying to kill people, but ..."

"Yeah," Ezra said, dropping down to sit cross-legged on the floor. "I shoved some patches into Zeb's belt, though. Hopefully he'll figure that out. You know, provided they don't kill each other first and patch each other up later and all."

"They're not going to kill each other," Hera sighed. More in hope than in certainty, but still. "We'll just ... we'll give them some time. Give them a chance to sort this out. One of us can go in later and ... make sure nobody's dead or bleeding or anything."

Or kissing, either, but that probably _was_ too much to hope at the minute. And nothing they would stop if it came to it. That was sort of the point.

"Not me!" Ezra said at once. "There's a reason I moved out of there. Somebody else can go risk their neck!"

"Coward," Sabine teased, but gently enough.

"It probably shouldn't be me either," Kanan admitted ruefully. "I doubt either of them are going to be very happy to see me for a while yet. Not that I blame them, but I'd rather not get _my_ neck broken either."

Hera groaned under her breath. " _I'll_ check on them," she said grumpily, knowing full well she was the one they'd been planning on from the start. Though she had somewhat volunteered, she did admit. And she had, kind of, been planning to do it anyway. Kallus _had_ looked bad when he stalked past her, and she could do with some reassurance on Zeb's health as well. If she was honest, she'd been planning on checking on them since seeing Zeb's wounded figure from the cockpit and hearing Kallus' silence on the comms.

Actually, when she put it like that ...

"I'll go check on them now," she decided, overruling her earlier intention to wait without a qualm. She probably _should_ give them some time, but if they were going to scare her like this they could damn well live with the consequences. She nodded grimly to herself, already climbing back to her feet. The other three looked up at her, with various expressions of nervousness or alarm, but wisely nobody said anything. Hera smiled blandly down at them. "You three get cleaned up, okay? I'll go check on our two idiots."

"Better them than us," Ezra muttered, smiling brightly when she looked at him. "I mean, you go ahead, Hera. Don't worry about us. We'll get sorted right away!"

"Smooth," Sabine whispered, laughingly, and Hera felt a little something ease in her chest. Some of the anger, some of the fear. Kanan smiled up at her knowingly, and Hera left the three of them to it with a smile and a shake of her head. 

Okay. Three people good to go. That just left two idiots.

She hesitated a little bit at their door, though. As angry as she was, as much as she needed to know they were safe, she hesitated, and wondered if this was really something she should be poking her nose into. _Now_ , at least. After that kind of day, after that kind of reminder. If it had been her, she really didn't know if she would have welcomed any intrusion.

There was nothing for it, though. She just had to make sure they weren't _dead_.

She knocked before she went in. Gently, giving them a chance to yell at her to go away. There was a sudden silence from inside the room, the low, fierce murmur of voices cutting off, and then, after a long second, Zeb growled out permission to come in.

They weren't fighting. That was the first thing she noticed going in. Well, they weren't fighting _physically_ , anyway, but she didn't think they'd been doing the other kind either. Zeb had Kallus tucked in against his side. His _uninjured_ side. Kallus had been leaning on him, his bad leg stretched out to one side in front of them. He'd leaned forward a bit as she came in. He'd leaned defensively in front of Zeb.

No. No, they hadn't been fighting, then. Or if they were, it hadn't been the kind that mattered. Not in the long run. Not where it counted most.

"Something wrong, Hera?" Zeb growled. A little angrily, a little testily still. He pulled Kallus back in against him, glaring at her as if to dare her to say anything wrong. Hera felt a smile threatening, wobbly, on her face. She shook her head. She pressed her hands on her hips and shook her head.

"Just making sure you're both okay," she said softly. Taking them both in, feeling the tightness ease a little more in her chest. "Ezra said he'd sent some bacta along in your belt, Zeb. In case Kallus needed it. The pair of you came off the worst from this one. I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

They eased up a bit at that. Both of them, shame flickering across both their faces. Kallus ducked his head, glanced away from her. Zeb just grimaced faintly, and nodded an apology.

"We're good," he said quietly. "Sorry Hera. We're okay. We're ... We'll look out for each other. Don't you worry. We're gonna be okay."

And maybe Kallus looked a little uncertain at that, maybe he looked like he wasn't sure he believed that at all, but Zeb looked certain enough for both of them. Zeb looked solid and determined enough to make it happen come what may.

Well, all right then. Well okay. Hera could live with that. She could take that and work with it, yes indeed.

Just another day, after all. Another day on the Ghost, another mission and another mess.

What else was new?


	2. Simple Things

There was a roaring emptiness in Kallus' head as he strode through the Ghost. Well. Limped, really, but he was only vaguely conscious of that. He was only vaguely conscious of quite a few things. Hera, for example. Some part of him did notice as he passed her. More of him, _most_ of him, did not. All he could focus on was the clawing thing inside his head, and the vague promise of safety behind the closed door of his quarters.

_Their_ quarters. His and Zeb's. But no. No. He couldn't notice that either. He couldn't think it. Not now. Not yet.

The door hissed shut behind him. For a second that, too, only barely registered. He'd stopped, he realised distantly. A few steps inside the door. The centre of the room. He'd come to a halt, and stood shaking now in the middle of the floor. Trembling. Violently. Echoes, he thought, his body's echoes of the thing inside his head. The room was silent. It must be, had to be. Yet he heard the roaring still, the howl of something twisted and terrified inside him.

The crackle of the shock baton. Zeb, choking out a gasp and staggering to his knees. Ezra's cry of alarm, Sabine's hiss of outrage. That ... that _person_ , standing over Zeb. Gloating, even in the midst of battle, even with two known Force users still in play. Leering down at Zeb's stricken form beneath him.

_You know what you're going to make me, lasat? Know what your kind goes for these days? A collector's item like you. You're going to make me RICH._

It was so loud, in his head. The echo. The clear, roaring reverberation. Everything else was so faint around it. Had been, from that moment onwards. Everything had seemed so distant. Pale and strained and far away. Something had snapped, in that moment. The world had become so simple. So distant and so simple. He'd felt himself moving without any higher input at all. The length of the roof had fallen away beneath him, the inner courtyard rushing up to meet him instead. His leg had buckled slightly on the landing. It had only distantly registered. More important at the time, infinitely more vital, had been the snap of the man's arm beneath his. Arm first, the shock baton clattering to the ground. The neck second, a more intimate sensation, thick flesh beneath his hands, twisting before the snap. The life fleeing the animal in his hands had been nearly incidental. He'd already been moving again. Stooping for the weapon, darting onwards. The world had vibrated to his senses, loud and distant. There'd been that roaring in his head, the sense of something else, something near-living, twisting beneath his skin.

He'd kept Zeb in his peripheral vision, though. Kept himself orientated, kept himself tethered. The younger pair had gathered their fallen companion up between them, Kanan standing guard like a good Jedi behind them. He'd get them out. Kallus had trusted that. Kanan would get them out. All Kallus had to do was keep them in his peripheral vision, and break apart anything that threatened them in the interim.

And he'd ... he'd done that. At least that. He had. It just ... It had been so simple. Such a simple thing to have to focus on. Comforting, nearly. Survival, vengeance, punishment. He'd always been good at those. They'd reached up, familiar, and swallowed him. He nearly hadn't heard Kanan calling him. 

He nearly hadn't listened.

He looked down at himself now. Tried to ... tried to _feel_. To come back, to sit back inside his skin. The problem was, so much of him didn't want to. His leg shook under him, pain distant for now but unlikely to stay that way. Something oozed gently along his eyebrow. Other hurts made themselves known, here or there, vague twinges as his body recognised it was allowed to protest again. Those were the least of it, though. Those weren't the real problem.

The problem was inside his head. The problem was what that creature had said, what he'd done. What Kallus had _let_ him do. Both today, letting Zeb fall, and ... and before. Letting _Lasan_ fall. Letting all of this happen. Setting all of it in motion.

Because it was so easy. Survival. Vengeance. That twisting thing beneath his skin. Not even violence, not for its own sake, but for the simple clarity that came alongside it. Guard this, destroy that. Don't think. Don't feel. Just stay alive, and wipe out anything in your path. Just keep moving. Keep fighting. Don't think about who they are. Don't think about the guilt. Don't think about the consequences. They don't matter. None of them matter. Just keep ...

Just keep killing. And hope you know how to live with yourself at the end of it.

... Kanan knew, he thought. Watching his hand, watching it curl into a shaking fist. Kanan knew what had been inside him out there. The _only_ thing he'd had inside him out there. _Kallus! Get over here right now! We don't have time for this!_ He'd held them up. Zeb had been injured, badly hurt, and Kallus had been too busy _killing people_ to care. He'd felt Kanan looking through him when he made the ship. He'd felt that blind stare on his soul. He hadn't contested it. There was nothing to contest.

There was nothing at all, now. Kallus felt his hand fall back to his side. Let it. Emptiness rushed back up, but it wasn't rage this time. It wasn't anger, or survival, or terror, or that ... that other thing, when he looked at Zeb. It was just emptiness, this time. It was just exhaustion. He thought idly about letting himself crumple to the floor. About just ... letting himself fall, as he'd let so many other things before. Everything from Onderon onwards. It wouldn't do his leg any favours at all, but it wasn't like that mattered much right now.

The door opened, though. Before he could do more than vaguely entertain the idea. The door hissed open, and Kallus felt himself straighten slowly at the sound. Felt something leap in his chest, without his leave, and turned slowly to face the figure in the doorway.

Turned to face Zeb.

The lasat was furious, was his first thought. Vague again. Distant. Zeb was hunched slightly, curled around the wound in his side. The fury rolled from him in waves. His green eyes looked almost luminous. His lips were curled back from his teeth. Nothing in Kallus quailed. The opposite, nearly. A part of him delighted. Familiarity again. Zeb injured and angry was so much easier, so much better, than Zeb crumpled and silent on the ground. And so much simpler, too, than the gentleness that was sometimes (most times) offered. Anger, Kallus could handle. Anger was the easiest thing in the world right now.

His eyes gravitated, though, to the wound in Zeb's side. Instantly, instinctively. Ahead of the anger, ahead of the delight, ahead of the simple, seductive hum of survival. His body moved without his input, as easy as dropping off a roof, and before Kallus knew what he was doing he was in Zeb's space, reaching out to check the dressings on his side. Stopping, not quite touching, just above the patches. Tracing the shape of the injury.

Zeb was staring at him, when he managed to look up from it. Eyes wide and wild, something gut-punched in his expression. Fury. Terror. Something ... else. Something Kallus didn't dare name. Zeb's face twisted in anguish, and then there was an arm around Kallus' shoulders, a hand on the back of his neck. Zeb pulled. Kallus let him. He toppled forward into the hug, his bad leg listing behind him, careful to aim for Zeb's uninjured side. Careful, _desperate_ , not to wound. Not again.

"You are an _idiot_ ," Zeb snarled at him, incongruous against the gentleness of his hand around Kallus' head. Kallus opened his mouth, and that hand squeezed warningly against his skull. "Don't you even dare. Don't you _dare_ right now. You think I don't know every kriffing thing in your head? I'm fine. I'm in one piece, I can put myself back together. And the rest of it ... it's _done_ , Kal. It's done, there's no going back. You're fixing what's left of it as best you can. That's all there is, that's all that you can do. There's no going back, and there's no point _dying_ for it either. So don't. Don't you ever do that again. You ever act that kriffing stupid and I'll bounce you off the cargo bay floor myself, injury or no injury. You understand me?"

... Yes. Yes, he did. Or he was beginning to, anyway. And he didn't want it. He didn't want to understand. It was easier when he didn't. So much easier, so much simpler. Kallus knew how to fight. He knew how to survive. He knew how to die, if it came to it. What Zeb wanted was so much harder. Zeb, Kanan, all of them. They wanted things he wasn't sure he remembered how to give, or had the right parts left inside him to try. 

But they'd earned them, a thousand times. So he supposed he'd have to manage.

"... Promise that," he whispered back. Growled, his hands curling into fists at Zeb's chest and spine. Leaning back, letting the lasat see his face. See what was left inside him. "Promise you'll be there to bounce me off the floor. Promise me that and I'll promise the same. Because if you die ... If you die, Zeb, I'm not sure I can promise anything. If you die, I--"

And this, too, was ancient. This too was familiar. Onderon. How simple things were after it. How simple things were when what you cared for was stripped away. He'd seen Zeb go down earlier. He'd felt ... the same horror. The same rage. Only worse. A thousand times. They'd been a kind of family, his first unit and he. Zeb was ... something else. So much else. The others as well. He'd hurt them. Nearly killed them. Killed so much that they loved around them. And they'd saved him anyway. Reached into that easy emptiness and pulled him out. Made him breathe. Made him hurt. Made him feel. Put him back inside his skin. He didn't know what he'd be if he lost them. He didn't know what would be left if that was ripped away a second time.

Too much, he suspected. And nowhere near enough.

There was a knock on the door, though, before Zeb could try to answer that. Both their heads came up, both their heads snapped around. Whatever Zeb might have said was lost as they looked rapidly back at each other, and then turned themselves in lurching unison towards the door. Zeb's arm firm around Kallus' shoulders. Kallus trying in spite of it to edge protectively in front of Zeb.

"... Come in then," Zeb growled out, his anger trickling back, snappish at the interruption. Kallus grimaced as he leaned on him, and hoped desperately that it wasn't Kanan behind the door.

It wasn't. He wasn't sure, though, that Hera was all that much of an improvement. It seemed Zeb wasn't sure either, if the temper in his voice and the way he pulled Kallus defensively back against him were anything to go by.

"Something wrong, Hera?" the lasat growled. 

Hera ... shook her head. There was an odd expression on her face as she studied them. Something that looked like it wanted to be a smile. Something that looked like it wanted to be tears. Kallus had no idea what to make of it.

"Just making sure you're both okay," she said. With every seriousness, and something staggered again in Kallus' chest. "Ezra said he sent some bacta along in your belt, Zeb. In case Kallus needed it. The pair of you came off the worst from this one. I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

Kallus looked away from her. Breathlessly, instinctively. He felt that desperation again, that confusion. Kanan had to have told her what had happened out there. He'd seen her passing him. He had noticed her, some part of him. Kanan had to have told her. And still, here she was. Her, Kanan, Ezra. Zeb. All of them. They knew what he was. They knew what he'd done. And still, even still, here they were. Saving him anyway. 

"We're good," Zeb said softly. Answering her. Kallus couldn't quite help his wince of uncertainty at it, but at least he didn't verbally disagree. "Sorry, Hera. We're okay. We're ... We'll look out for each other. Don't you worry. We're gonna be okay."

His hand tightened on Kallus' shoulder as he said it. Squeezed. Because he wasn't just answering her. He was answering something else as well. We'll look out for each other. Promise me that and I'll promise the same. Don't worry. We're going to be okay.

And it wasn't possible. Wasn't real, could never be so easy as that. Kallus knew everything that was easy out here, and that wasn't one of them. That was ... the opposite of easy. That was terror and hope and anguish and pain. That was complicated. It sounded so simple, but it wasn't. Hope of that magnitude was the hardest thing in the world.

But Zeb had promised him. Zeb believed it, and Zeb had promised. And after all they'd done for him, the very least Kallus could do was try to do the same.

"... Guess I should look you over a bit," Zeb said at last, when Hera had left. Looking down at Kallus, still pressed against his side, and grimacing ruefully. "You look like poodoo, Kal. What'd you do, walk your face into every fist between us and the ship?"

Kallus blinked at him for a long second. Then he snorted.

"It wasn't every fist," he said, easing out from under the lasat's arm and limping over to the lower bunk. Zeb followed, that odd expression still on his face. Watched him as he started to wrestle his painful way out of his shirt. "Every second fist at most. Most of it's just the leg, and there's not much I could have done about that. _I'm_ not the one who got himself seared in the side. You know, you've really got to stop leaving that hole in your guard. It's all very well if it's _me_ , but--"

He cut off, nearly clicking his teeth shut around his tongue, when Zeb's hand suddenly and gently gripped his knee. The bad one. The one that had started this whole thing. His damnation and his salvation all in one. Words vanished, and Kallus stared up at him mutely, as helpless as he'd been that first time. As safe.

"Shut up and let me have a look," Zeb grumbled gently. Reaching out, tugging the shirt out of Kallus' hands. Being careful around his own wound. "If you're going to get yourself half killed trying to protect me, guess the least I can do is put you back together afterwards, right?"

... There was no answer to that. It wasn't even the right question. But Zeb's hand was on his knee, and Kallus couldn't explain that. Couldn't explain anything. Could barely even think. So he shrugged, eventually. Winced, as his body took advantage of the lull to emphatically complain about everything he'd so much as thought of doing today, and somewhat gracelessly conceded the point.

"Let me do the heavy lifting," he sighed tiredly. "If you disturb that wound, I for one am not going to explain it to Hera. Or any of the rest of them for that matter. Just ... sit down and don't die for five minutes, will you? I'd prefer that. I really would."

Zeb eyed him for a second, then swivelled carefully around and sat beside him with a snort. "Yeah, all right," he said, touching a hand gingerly to his side. "Don't want to have to explain anything to Hera either. Or Sabine and Ezra, since they're the ones who glued me back together. Sabine can get fussy about her work. All right. Just, let me know when you need a hand, yeah? I'm serious, you look like shit."

"I'll let you know," Kallus promised him. Easily, really, with a little smile as he leaned into the lasat's shoulder. Of all the promises he'd asked and offered today, that was definitely the simplest. He had so many to keep. Maybe it was a good idea to start with something that small and that simple. "Don't worry. I'll let you know."

And who knew, he thought. Who knew. Maybe if you started small, the big things, the terrifying things, might come that little bit easier when it came to it.

Either way, he was promised now.


End file.
